FWC Keystone Full Rebuild Project

[Colorado CJ]

Hello everyone.

Last week, I bought an '86 FWC Keystone for $675.00. It has some issues, but for the money, I thought it was a decent deal. In this thread I'll document my full rebuild to include narrowing the floor pack for modern trucks, rebuilding the interior, replacing the over cab wood, building new lift panels and repainting the exterior.

Here's what I'm starting with.





I started in on the build today. First, I though I'd start with narrowing the floor pack so that it can fit in newer model trucks. This camper had a floor pack that was 64" wide. Most modern trucks have a tail gait opening of 60", so the camper won't fit newer trucks.

I'll be narrowing down the camper floor pack to 58"

First, I needed to unscrew the trim pieces, then pull all the staples out of the wood.



I'm narrowing it down 3" on each side. So I had to cut out the aluminum frame, and shorten the bottom section 3", then weld back the vertical aluminum frame piece in the new location. I also cut down the outer skin 3"

Before pic.



After pic.



Next, I scribed a line 3" in on the floor and bottom of the floor pack. I then used a circular saw and sawzall to cut it out.



I measured up the parts I cut out and added 3" to the horizotal piece and made a new side. I am using gorilla glue and countersink screws to construct the new sides.



A little grunting and wiggling and hammering and it fit right in. I used gorrila glue on all wood to wood joints (the original only relied on long staples). Here's how it looks now, just need to clean up and reinstall the trim work.



On the inside



I'll finish up rebuilding the drivers side tomorrow. It should go a little faster now that I have a plan on how to do it.

The whole interior will then be gutted, new flooring installed and the paneling painted. I then need to build new lifting panels and replace the over cab bed area. I'll probably redo the interior totally and will be repainting the outside.

Lots of work left! I am having fun though. I really like rebuilding/building things so this is right up my alley. I'll post again once I'm further along.

 

[washington taco]

Wow! Huge project! I will be watching.

 

[Camelfilter]

Wow nice find & challenging project. Thanks for sharing! Interested in following as well...

 

[Jb1rd]

Excellent project, thank you for taking the time to document, there are so many of these older FWC around that just need some love!!

 

[Colorado CJ]

Thanks guys.

Not much to to post today. The driver's side is built differently than the passenger's side, so I had to first remove the stove, sink, propane storage area and most of the cabinetry to see what I had to work with.

Its a mess.




Once that was done, I removed the plywood off the side of the floor pack.



Then I scribed a line 3" in on all the wood I had to cut away, as well as the front piece of the aluminum frame. Got my circular saw and sawzall out and went to work. It was a little harder cutting this side out as I had to cut upside down because of the way this side was put together. Nothing like a face full of sawdust at the end of a day



Anyway, that is all I got done today. Tomorrow I'll be installing the new plywood, cleaning up and reinstalling the trim pieces and probably replacing the cabover wood.

 

[Colorado CJ]

I finished up redoing the plumbing and wiring on the drivers side, then I installed new plywood.





Now that the frame is narrowed to fit in my truck, I'll be starting on redoing the interior. After that is finished, I'll repair the drivers side aluminum (the previous owner said the camper slid off the jack and had the side punctured), then repaint the outside.

 

[bob91yj]

I can't understand what's taking so long to get this project done!:sombrero:

Amazing work. When I started reading this thread I figured it would be a year long project, I had no idea you planned on getting it done, and succeeding in getting it done in a couple of weeks.

 

[Colorado CJ]

I can't understand what's taking so long to get this project done!:sombrero:

Amazing work. When I started reading this thread I figured it would be a year long project, I had no idea you planned on getting it done, and succeeding in getting it done in a couple of weeks.

Yeah, I don't like to sit on things. I want to get this done in a few weeks so that I can use it this spring/summer to camp here in the mountains/desert. Not sure how long it will take me exactly though as this is all new to me. This is my first camper, so I'm not too sure yet where to source parts, or what parts exactly I want to go with.

 

[Colorado CJ]

I got a little more done on the camper today. First, I started by cutting out and removing the cabover wood. It was in pretty bad shape. I'll be replacing it with 3/4" birch ply.



After removing the wood, I seen that it would be easier to replace the front lifting panel while the cabover wood was removed, instead of having to lay up there and work on my stomach/back. So, I went into the camper to see what to do next.

I decided to just gut it totally and start new. So, I spent a couple hours tearing out all the paneling and removing the insulation. I'll be re insulating it with pink core foam. I haven't decided yet on what to replace the paneling with. I'll probably go with some 1/4" beadboard.

So, here's how it looks, totally gutted. Tomorrow, I'll pick up some foam and whatever I decide on paneling it with. I'll run some wires behind everything first so I don't have the rats nest of the stock wiring to worry about.

 

[Colorado CJ]

I decided to start taking the lift panels off, so I made a couple 2x4 braces to hold the roof up while I worked on the panels



As you can see, the lift panels are toast.

After I took off the front lift panel, there was some mildew/mold. Its long dead and cleaned up like new with a little Tilex.



Here are the lift panels after they were removed, along with the old cabover wood. The top lift panels were totally gone, so I have to do a little measuring to see how tall to make them.

I'm not sure yet on what material I'm going to make the new lift panels out of. I thought of some 1/8" fiberglass sheeting, but I'm not sure if it is too flexible. I'll probably just use some birch ply again, if I can find it thin enouugh.



After that, I started working on the couple of holes that were punched into the side of the camper by the previous owner. I started by getting a peening hammer and block and started tapping the siding back into shape. Then after mixing up some polyester resin and cutting some fiberglass mat, I layed up a couple of layers of mat and painted on the polyester to the inside of the aluminum sheeting.



After the fiberglass was cured, I started in on the bondo, building up the area by one thin layer at a time (so I don't get any cracking). It took 3 layers.



That's all I did today. Tomorrow, I'll finish up the bondo work and start sanding the area back into shape. I'll probably build a couple of new lifting panels and rivit them back into the camper as well. Also, if I have enough time, I'll cut and install the new cabover wood.

 

[Rot Box]

Holy smokes this is awesome :Wow1: Lookin' good keep it up.

 

[Seabass]

I wish I could find one of these campers to get back in good shape. But I've never seen one for sale. Maybe one day. Good job, by the way!

 

[Colorado CJ]

Holy smokes this is awesome :Wow1: Lookin' good keep it up.

Thanks!

I wish I could find one of these campers to get back in good shape. But I've never seen one for sale. Maybe one day. Good job, by the way!

I found this one on Craigslist. There are lots of these old campers floating around here though since they used to be made in Denver.

 

[Colorado CJ]

Well, this evening, I decided to do a little work on the camper.

I wanted to take care of this mess here.



So, I went and found some decent wood at a great price. I picked up enough to complete the whole interior of the camper, as well as make some new cabinetry out of it. It is Baltic Birch ply with a bead board look to it. $10.00 a sheet marked down from $39.00! The color is actually a light honey color, much lighter than in these photos.



It took an hour or two just to drill out all the rivets from the old lift panel so that I could reuse the piano hinges. With the help of some WD-40, I got the hinges back into shape.

Since the old lift panels were totally broken, I had to do some careful measuring to see what height I needed to make the upper lift panels. Here's the front one starting to get worked on. (excuse the mess, I make a big mess of the shop when I work on things)



And here's a short clip of me riveting the upper panel together.

https://youtu.be/zalFYrWwBV4

Adding the bottom panel to the top panel.



Here is the completed front lift panel. It took approximately 3 hours to build a new one. More than half the time was spent drilling out all the old rivets. One more to go, then I can start installing them



That's it for tonight. I might spend tomorrow evening building the new back lift panel. I might set up my camera and take a time lapse of it, we'll see.

 

[R3D2]

awesome work you're doing here. sure would love to replace my Hawk with a keystone but man are they hard to come by! looking forward to seeing the continued progress.